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by yjftsjthsd-h 844 days ago
> It is not that hard folks. Set the billing limits.

Excellent idea. Please describe how to create an account on AWS or GCP that is not allowed to spend more than $100/mo. Since it is "a really easy fix" and "takes almost no time" it should be easy to explain, right?
2 comments
kstrauser 844 days ago
https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/hands-on/control-your... tells you how to set up a budget, with notifications when you're getting close.

That's probably enough for 99% of people, and if you're highly motivated, you could make that trigger an SNS notification that trips a circuit breaker.

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yjftsjthsd-h 844 days ago
No, that's really not good enough. I don't want to need to be "highly motivated" in order to set a limit, I want to say this thing cannot use more than this many dollars each month, no conditions no exceptions no questions. If I make a fun little side project and it hits the front page of HN, I don't want to quibble about whether I cut it off in time or some hacked together little script turns things off correctly, I want it capped.
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nonfamous 844 days ago
You can in Azure, easily. New Azure free accounts (which most learners start with) have spending limits enabled by default. https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/cost-management-billing/ma...
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ghaff 844 days ago
There are limitations to what you can get with spending limit accounts, but Azure has (always?) had more options for people looking for hard billing caps than the other two big providers.

While you can footgun yourself with hard limits I tend to think that learners/hobbyists should, in general, be able to access at least many services with an ironclad guarantee that they can't be billed for over a certain monthly amount or a total number.

I'm much more inclined to shrug if a startup screws themselves over with a hard spending limit than if a student screws themselves over because of a lack of one.

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yjftsjthsd-h 844 days ago
So honestly if that's true I might have to try Azure, thanks. However, when the claim was "This can be done with almost all cloud providers" I feel comfortable wanting an answer for the other two of the big three.
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